Review: Codelobster PHP Edition

General Facts

Unlike other IDEs for PHP that I know and have used a lot (Netbeans and Aptana) , Codelobster is not based on Java. Therefore It mostly just runs in Windows. You can use Wine to run it on Linux, but it’s not really stable.

But this fact is also an advantage: It is lightning fast!

When one has loaded a large project all IDE start to scan the folders and look for changed Files to parse and offer code assist. In this time on Netbeans for example it is not possible to do anything (at least on my machine) . In Codelobster, when loading the same project, I can work normally except for the code assist which works just when the parsing process is finished. Since that process on Netbeans can take a couple of minutes it is a great advantage for me. Maybe this happens due the massive overload on functionality that Netbeans provides. With this in mind I may create a Comparison Post on Codelobster, Netbeans and Aptana some time later, but now back to topic.

If it’s the loading of a large Project or the showing of the code assist window, everything just feels fluid with no experienced breaks.